Our last lunch seminar this semester: Now re-announced with a new date!

Mahr (the Muslim dower) is regarded as obligatory to Muslim marriages. This means that when a Muslim man marries a Muslim woman, he provides her with a certain financial gift. However, this arrangement is controversial. Does Mahr entail the “sale” of a woman in a Muslim marriage? Because of such concerns, marriage rituals that contain mahr are not approved by the Norwegian state, as they are seen as contravening “Norwegian law and general gender equality principles”.

But does mahr merely entail the “sale” of a woman, or can it serve other purposes as well?

In this seminar, the lived experiences of Norway’s regulation of mahr will be examined. Building on a study of the Iranian diaspora in Norway, Marianne Bøe will explore the forms that mahr can take in contemporary Norwegian society. In her study, Bøe has conducted interviews with members of the Iranian diaspora, and has also studied documents relevant for Norway’s marriage ritual regulation. Does the present regulation of mahr contribute to safeguarding gender equality and the rights of women, or does it have other unintended effects?

The seminar takes place at seminar room 112 at Adm. org, Christies gate 17, on Wednesday 13th of June, from 12.30 to 14.00. A light lunch will be served,

All are welcome!

Marianne Bøe is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Archeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion (AHKR) at UiB.

In recent years, a large number of Syrian refugees have settled in Europe. In the media, most of the debate concerning these refugees has been about how they impact their host societies. But how does this large Syrian diaspora impact politics in Syria itself?

For this IMER lunch seminar, we will be joined by Amany Selim and Espen Stokke, PhD candidates at sociology and comparative politics at UiB. They both do research projects where they explore the engagement of Syrian diaspora activists, and how these activists try to make a difference in the homeland. With their work on the Syrian case, they are hoping to contribute to the growing body of literature that attempts to bridge social movement theory and diaspora politics.

In the presentation, Selim and Stokke will give a brief overview of the field: What do we know about the activism of the Syrian diaspora? They will also present their own projects, and what they wish to add to the field.

It is time for another IMER lunch seminar. This time, it is about a recent event: The remarkable story about how the Islamic Council of Norway was torn into two, after 25 years of existence. Olav Elgvin will be giving a presentation based on recent fieldwork.

In Western Europe, representative Islamic councils have been seen as important policy instruments. By relying on dialogue with representative Islamic councils, it has been assumed that authorities and Muslim minority groups may be able to interact in a better way. But in most European countries, these councils have been highly unstable, with frequent conflicts and splits.

Why have these conflicts occurred? In his presentation, Elgvin will look in detail at the case of the Islamic Council of Norway. Between 1993 and 2017 it functioned as the umbrella organization for most of the mosques in Norway. It was unique in Western Europe in that close to all the mosques and the major Islamic organizations took part. It had maintained dialogue activities with various other life stance communities. It received funding from the state. It had built up a successful halal franchise.

In 2017, all of this changed. Several of the largest member mosques broke out. They lost the funding from the state. Their main partner in the halal franchise cut ties with them. Relations between authorities and Islamic organizations were thrown into disarray. How did all of this happen?

Place: Christies gate 17, the meeting room at the second floor of “Adm. org.”. Time: 20.02, 12.30 to 14.00.

As usual, a light lunch will be served. All are welcome!

Olav Elgvin is a PhD candidate at the Department for Comparative Politics. He is also the coordinator of IMER.

Kicking off a new semester with IMER lunch seminars, our first seminar this year is building on exciting fieldwork from Bergen. Hilde Danielsen from Uni Research Rokkansenteret is giving a presentation about the symbolic value of birthday parties in contemporary Norway.

Danielsen argues that birthday celebrations have become more than a private family matter, and are increasingly seen as a socially charged question in Norwegian society. Many parents with and without migration background, as well as teachers and other actors, claim that birthday parties have the potential to create social inclusion. They are especially concerned that children with migrant background should celebrate and attend. Celebrating birthdays has seemingly become one of the litmus tests of whether an immigrant individual or an immigrant group is integrated into Norwegian society.

As in many other parts of the world, domestic work in India is performed under precarious conditions. Low wages, long working hours, low status, and the absence of legislation that guarantees fair terms of employment are realities that confront India’s domestic workers on a daily basis. Domestic work is one of the largest sectors of work in urban areas in India. At the same time it is one the most stigmatized and lowest paid occupations. The fact that this work is mainly carried out by women, and also by poor and illiterate migrants from lower caste groups, has contributed to this stigmatization.

In this IMER seminar, Padmaja Barua will present findings from her doctoral research in India. Over a period 10 months, Barua spent time with both domestic workers and their employers, and with a trade union that works with domestic workers in Mumbai. Her aim was to critically explore the relationship between women engaged in paid domestic and their employers, and also the relationship between these women and organizations that seek to advance the empowerment of these women. In this presentation, she will specifically explore how domestic workers respond to the cultural beliefs that seek to sustain their subordination, and the impact that unionization has had in the lives of these women.

The seminar takes place at from 12.30 to 14.00 on Thursday the 2nd of November. Venue: The Department for Comparative Politics, Christies gate 15, seminar room at 2nd floor.

A lunch will be served. Welcome!

Padmaja Barua is a PhD candidate at the HEMIL Center, Faculty of Psychology, UiB.

Yemen is currently experiencing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, due to war and pressure on resources. This could lead one to expect a massive movement of refugees out of the country. Still, only a small number of Yemeni refugees have tried to reach Europe. Why? This question is difficult to answer, and the potential factors are many and diverse. Eirik Hovden, a specialist on Yemen, will in this presentation provide geographical and historical background information about Yemen, and explore the developments leading up to the current conflict.

Note: The seminar takes place at the seminar room of Adm. org., at Christies gate 17, on the 4th of Octobre from 12.30 to 14.00.

A lunch will be served.

Welcome!

Eirik Hovden is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Archeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion at UiB. He specializes on Islamic law in Yemen.

The war in Syria has created a large flow of refugees into Lebanon. Maja Janmyr from the faculty of law at UiB has recently conducted a prolonged fieldwork among Syrian refugees in Lebanon. She joins IMER for our first lunch seminar this semester, in order to present some findings.

In this seminar, Janmyr will explore the various legal, bureaucratic and social labels that get attached to the refugees by humanitarian, state and local government actors. A wide array of labels are imposed; registered refugee, laborer, displaced, foreigner, and more. These labels carry with them implications for what a Syrian may do, and how her presence is understood by others in the community. The labels also influence what type of rights and protections she may have access to. Importantly, the emergence of labels in one arena often influences how and why another set of labels takes shape in another.

The seminar takes place at the seminar room at the ground floor of Sosiologisk institutt, Rosenberggaten 39, between 12.30 and 14.00. A lunch will be served.

Welcome!

Maja Janmyr is a postdoctoral fellow at the Faculty of Law at the University of Bergen.

On the evening of Thursday 01.06, IMER is co-hosting an important event in Bergen. How do Syrian refugees experience migration into Bergen and Norway? This is is the topic of a large public town hall meeting at Kvarteret. Organized by Josh Dickstein from IMER Bergen, this event brings together Syrian refugees with local practicioners from the Bergen area. This is an opportunity to hear voices that are seldom heard in the public debate.

What happens with Afghan migrants after they have received a negative decision on their asylum application in Norway? This is the topic of our next IMER seminar, with Halvar Andreassen Kjærre. For several years, Kjærre has followed a group of Afghan migrants around Europe. After their asylum application was rejected in Norway, he sought them out in Italy, Greece, France, Germany, Denmark and Sweden.

This approach makes it possible to understand how various aspects of the migrant’s lives change over time, and between different places in their migration trajectories. Identity, living conditions, social status, legal status, social relations, and desires and hopes are not constant. All of this changes along with their journeys. Following mobile people over time also gives insights into their migratory tactics, and the burden that is imposed upon them by different sovereign states.

The seminar takes place at the seminar room at the ground floor of Sosiologisk institutt, Rosenberggaten 39 the 23rd of may 2017 at 12.30. A light lunch will be served.

Halvar Andreassen Kjærre is a PhD candidate at IMER Bergen / Department of social Anthropology (UiB). His main field of interest is irregular migration, asylum regimes, migration control and mobility studies. The topic of his PhD thesis is the intra-European mobility of Afghan migrants in Europe.

How is identity connected to jihadi radicalisation? The esteemed sociologist Riva Kastoryano from Sciences Po in Paris is coming to IMER to explore this question. She argues that jihadis are driven by an identity narrative on their belonging to the ummah, the reimagined worldwide Muslim community in which national, religious and wordly attachments are all jumbled together. Different cases of jihadi radicalization have in common this larger issue of belonging, that connects citizenship with transnational networks and an imagined diaspora.

The seminar takes place at the seminar room at the ground floor of Sosiologisk institutt, Rosenberggaten 39. A lunch will be served.

Welcome!

Riva Kastoryano is a research director at the Center for International Studies and Research at Sciences Po, Paris.